New Year – a poem by Faiz Ahmad Faiz

Faiz Ahmad Faiz(Punjabi,Urdu:فیض احمد فیض‎, born 13 February 1911 – 20 November 1984) MBE, NI, Lenin Peace Prize was an influential leftwing intellectual, revolutionary poet, and one of the most highly-regarded poets of the Urdu language, having been nominated four times for the Nobel Prize for literature. Faiz also wrote poetry in the Punjabi language. A notable member of theProgressive Writers’ Movement (PWM), Faiz was an avowed Marxist, for which he received the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union in 1962.

His work remains influential in Pakistan literature and arts. Faiz’s literary work was posthumously publicly honoured when thePakistan Governmentconferred upon him the nation’s highest civil award,Nishan-e-Imtiaz, in 1990.

Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poetry has been translated into many languages, including English and Russian. A Balochi poet,Mir Gul Khan Nasir, who was also a friend of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, translated his bookSar-e-Wadi-e-SeenaintoBalochiwith the titleSeenai Keechag aa.Gul Khan‘s translation was written while he was in jail duringZulfiqar Ali Bhutto‘s regime for opposing the government’s policies. It was only published in 1980, afterZia-ul-Haqtoppled Bhutto’s government and freed all the political prisoners of his (Bhutto’s) regime.Victor Kiernan, British Marxist historian translated Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s works into English, and several other translations of whole or part of his work into English have also been made by others;[29]a transliteration in Punjabi was made by Mohinder Singh.[30]Faiz Ahmad Faiz, himself, also translated works of notable poets from other languages into Urdu. In his book “Sar-i Waadi-i Seena” there are translations of the famous poet ofDagestan,Rasul Gamzatov. “Deewa”, a Balochi poem byMir Gul Khan Nasir, was also translated into Urdu by Faiz.[31][32]